Smart USA to offer hatchback

Smart USA dealerships will begin selling a five-passenger Smart-branded subcompact hatchback built by Nissan North America Inc. beginning in late 2011, giving the dealers a second vehicle to sell along with the tiny, two-person Smart ForTwo.

But the deal apparently won’t mean new business for either of Nissan’s U.S. assembly plants in Tennessee and Mississippi. The car is expected to be produced in Mexico.

Announcement of the deal was made by Smart USA, the independent U.S. distributor for the Daimler-Benz Smart brand. Smart USA is owned by the Penske Automotive Group, the chairman of which is auto-racing legend Roger Penske.

Penske said his company is “proud to be a partner with both Daimler and Nissan, two companies focused on bringing high-quality, fuel-efficient products to the U.S. market.”

The new Smart model, which will have five doors, will be built on a chassis being developed by Nissan for a variety of vehicles smaller than the current Nissan Versa subcompact, which is now the smallest vehicle Nissan sells in the U.S. market.

Smart USA released front and rear design sketches of the vehicle and said it would be powered by a 1.6-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine, but declined to give any other details.

Based on dimensions of the new small car Nissan is developing for Central and South America, the Smart five-door would be about 12 feet long, compared with 8.8 feet for the current Smart ForTwo. That’s about 2 feet shorter than the Versa hatchback.

Tennessee-based Nissan North America declined to give any details about the car, or to say exactly where it would be assembled.

“We’re confirming only that Smart USA has signed a memorandum of agreement to source a five-door, gasoline-powered, B-segment vehicle from one of our manufacturing facilities in North America,” said Katherine Zachary, a Nissan spokeswoman.

“We haven’t specified where it would be built,” she said. “But it is a B-segment vehicle, and those are built in Mexico.”

She noted that the deal is between Nissan and Smart USA, rather than between Nissan and Daimler, the German automaker that created the Smart brand and produces the current Smart vehicles in Europe.

But the deal seems to be an offshoot of a broad agreement among Daimler, Nissan and the French automaker Renault announced in April that called for cooperation on a variety of vehicle-development projects, including sharing vehicle designs between Renault and Smart, and a swap of small equity stakes by the three companies.

Nissan and Renault already have significant ownership stakes in each other, and Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn also holds that post with Renault. There is no cross-management between Nissan/Renault and Daimler, however.

Nissan makes its small cars for the U.S. market, the subcompact Versa and compact Sentra, in Aguascalientes, Mexico. The company also has a plant in Cuernavaca, Mexico, which assembles small vehicles for Central and South America.

Smart USA’s dealers have been asking for a larger model to accommodate customers for whom the two-seat version just isn’t practical – such as those who need extra room for passengers, pets or cargo.

The new model will give them the option of a larger, roomier vehicle that still offers the kind of fuel economy that made the ForTwo appealing.

Smart ForTwo sales reached a high of 24,622 in 2008, when gasoline prices spiked to more than $4 a gallon nationwide. But they have fallen to just 4,779 this year, through September, as gasoline prices remain below $3 a gallon.

Dealers say fuel efficiency is not on customers’ minds right now, but some who come in to look at the ForTwo say they do expect gas prices to go back up.

The Smart ForTwo has a three-cylinder gasoline engine with EPA ratings of 33 mpg city/41 highway. The 1.6-liter, four-cylinder engine Nissan uses in the base 2011 Versa is rated at 26 mpg city/34 highway when equipped with a five-speed manual transmission.

If that’s the engine that will be used in the Smart five-passenger model, the fuel economy could be higher than that of the Versa, since the Smart would be smaller and would weigh less.

Dealers have been told the new car would be available with either a continuously variable automatic or manual transmission. The Smart ForTwo comes only with an automatic.

Under terms of the earlier deal with Daimler, Renault is to supply a four-passenger vehicle to Smart beginning in about 2013. The two companies also said they jointly would develop the next generation of the Smart ForTwo, including electric models, which would be sold by Smart dealers in the U.S. and Europe, also starting in 2013.

The Smart electric model will use the same technology Nissan has developed for its new Leaf compact electric vehicle that goes on sale in five states in December, and nationwide sometime next year. That vehicle uses an advanced lithium-ion battery pack to power an electric motor that turns the drive wheels.

It has a range of about 100 miles between recharges. No details have been released about the range of the Smart electric model yet.

G. Chambers Williams III has been automotive columnist for the Express-News since 2000. Contact him at (210) 250-3236; chambers@express-news.net.